For a place that angels supposedly come from, the Synapse sure seems like a hellish place. All you have are a bunch steak-eating sadists up there who aren’t the least pleased with how Nymph has awakened the Uranus Queen. It looks like Nymph is damaged in some way now too, or at least that’s what the blinking green light on her collar seems to indicate.

Having lost his mother at the age of seven, and now the person he’s looked up to for the past five years at the age of twelve, can anyone really blame Lag for crying so much? I think some people have lost grasp of the fact this isn’t your standard shounen affair. Now that he’s been left Gauche’s Nocturne #20 Shindan Custom as a memento, come on people, let the boy cry a little.

So obviously Aizen babbling about becoming god isn’t the most interesting thing in the chapter, but I didn’t want to put up the semi-spoilery image that I did want to talk about: Tousen and his new ability. I actually laughed at the last panel with Tousen with his hand on his face because I should have seen it coming that he, Ichimaru, and probably even Aizen himself would get Hollow masks (if that is indeed what’s going to happen). I’m actually hoping that it’s something other than a mask so that we can see something different, but regardless of what it is, it likely means that we’ll soon reach a new level of power-up ridiculousness. What I wouldn’t give for some DBZ-style scouters right now…

Oh and as for Yammy, I really don’t care to see more of him because I’d rather the Karakura Town battle move forward, but since Kubo Tite’s apparently intent on dragging it out, I guess the Byakuya and Zaraki combination against him is as good as any. It’d be even nicer if Kurotsuchi decided to join them.

For an episode titled “Girls in the Water”, surprisingly only half of it was devoted to swimsuits and such. As some people have already pointed out, the anime is taking its own spin on things and skipping around the manga a fair bit. This week we start with chapter 14 for the first half and jump all the way back to chapter 8 for the second, but they did a pretty good job from a continuity point of view.

Somehow I managed to survive this hellish week, so things should be back to normal shortly. Like I said in my earlier post, I won’t be making up all the shows that I missed, but I’ll still do DtB, Railgun, and probably Bleach.

I always suspected that Kaede was some crazy zoumotsu animal spreading, Kampfer-inducing, psychotic Moderator, but I never would’ve imagined that she’s this two-faced. With a squad of white Kampfer seemingly doing her bidding, Natsuru really needs to rethink his harem choice. Shizuku’s not shy about showing everyone how to steal a third kiss in an unrequited love, so she still has my pick.

…You bring out the swarm. Except in this case, that means his Raikage brother for some gang beats. Seeing as the last chapter left Bee at Kisame’s mercy, I’m a bit surprised how quickly the tides turned. It wasn’t like Raikage and co. hopped in right away either, as Bee managed to get a pencil attack off before hand. In any case, is it safe to assume that Kisame’s dead now? I mean he got decapitated and everything, but I’m still skeptical about any death in Naruto until I see either a funeral or some acknowledgment from comrades. Also, just so that there’s no misunderstanding on the technique Kisame was trying to pull off, it was a “Suiton Daikoudan” 「水遁大鮫弾」, which literally translates to “Water Technique, Huge Shark Bullet”. Judging by its name, it wasn’t any sort of replacement/escape technique.

The rest of the chapter with Ao surviving and Mizukage seeing through Fuu’s ability was fairly run-of-the-mill, but they ended on a decent cliffhanger with Sai approaching Naruto about Sakura’s confession. It’s been suggested to me that what Naruto doesn’t know is that permission to dispose of Sasuke as a missing ninja was given, however I double-checked this because I sort of recall him already knowing. Well it turns out he does, after hearing it from Kiba at the end of chapter 451. As such, the only thing that comes to mind at this point is that Sakura confessed because she’s concerned about Naruto putting himself in more danger for her sake. i.e. That it was a semi-guilt-driven confession. Are there any other possibilities that I’m overlooking?

* Oh right, Naruto’s not aware that Sakura and co. are going to try and take out Sasuke themselves. Somehow, I don’t think they’ll succeed…

I really hope Ume’s not behind all the rumour shenanigans from before, because I really don’t want to end up hating her. Yes, she’s a Hirano Aya character, so there are some inadvertent apprehensions already. However, I want to give her the benefit of the doubt since she doesn’t seem fake to me just yet.

Sumika you animal! You made Ushio cry! I wish I could take that thought and run with it for the rest of the post, but both her and Ushio don’t even know why it happened. Those poor girls don’t even realize their love is already there at some subconscious level.

It’s funny the things you can inadvertently come across on the Internet when you’re trying to blog an episode of anime and looking for some new PVs at the same time. While this is completely unrelated to anime and has no precedence here, I found the song interesting enough to post about it. It’s titled “Koe wo Kikasete” (Let Me Hear Your Voice) and is the opening theme of the currently airing Japanese drama Ohitori-sama. Now if you’re somewhat unfamiliar with Asian music, the unexpected part is that BIGBANG is actually a five-member boyband from Korea. This isn’t the first time Korean artists have ventured into the Japanese market, nor will it be the last, but I’ve been pretty detached from the non-anime-related music scene for the past while. As it turns out, they’re another one of YG Entertainment‘s money-making creations and a pretty popular one too. For a detailed rundown of the group, I’ll refer you to their wiki page.

What I wanted to point out though is that I found this song surprisingly good for a very odd reason. It doesn’t sound very Japanese at all. Neither does their pronunciation of the lyrics, which sounds a bit off to me at times. In short, it sounds like what it is — a Korean-ized Japanese song. But I’ll be damned, it’s really catchy and I’ve been looping it for the past while. I guess I’m not the only one that thinks so either, seeing as it topped out at #4 on the Oricon charts earlier this month. If you’re negatively swayed by the image of Asian boybands (or boybands in general), I suggest not watching the PV right away, simply clicking play, and letting your ears decide. I unintentionally did the same when I stumbled on the video and walked away for a bit, then heard the song playing from afar and thought, “Hmm, this song’s pretty good.” Anyway, you’ll probably notice that their rappers have pretty good English as well, something I find fairly common with Korean artists given how heavily influenced they are by western hip hop and R&B artists.

That said, I’m kind of tempted to go check out the Ohitori-sama drama now. Based on the synopsis, it sounds like something I’d enjoy too. This might not be a good thing from an anime blogging perspective though. I can feel my Jdrama senses tingling. Once you get caught up in the whole drama phase, it’s hard to get out of it for a while! Hmm, what to do…

Crazy episodes are crazy. That’s far from being the best way of describing things, but with Misuzu cutting herself, Kakeru drinking her blood, Kusakabe Misao re-emerging, Shiori revealing her true identity, and what looks like our first casualty of the series, I’m a bit shocked by it all. To top it all off, Yuka continues to creep me out. *shudder*